


hard sunshine

by trell (qunlat)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Canon, Aromantic Character, Lowercase, Other, Punk Hazard Arc, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 10:09:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2769158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qunlat/pseuds/trell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>as vergo hauls trafalgar's unconscious body up off the floor all she can think of is how she ran her hands through his hair, now matted with blood; how hair is the last thing to go on a head jammed on a pike, a dark mass framing the dead's eternal smile.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	hard sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> Assumes the events of [careful fear & dead devotion](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2432627).

when she sees him her second thought is that he looks harsh and tired and cold, expression hooded and the lines of his face grim.

the first thought to cross her mind is _cruel_ , but she casts it aside quickly. monet has seen cruelty, and it comes with smiles and wagging tongues and wild laughter, not sleepless bruises deep-set under the eyes.

on that first day she sits on the far side of the room from trafalgar law and caesar, organizing records, and she listens to them talk; and she doesn't look their way until caesar says, "take my precious assistant's heart, and give me yours." she does turn then, curious whether trafalgar will accept such dangerous terms.

for all his quiet voice monet expects an explosion, a denial, _never_ , but it doesn't come: trafalgar says, "very well," and he says, _room_ , in the low pitch he seems to reserve just for that word, and suddenly there's a hole in his chest and a hole in her own, and her beating heart sits in his palm.

"oh," she says, feeling suddenly cold, a chill that radiates from her heart into all of her body, for all that her heart is no longer inside.

but she is snow incarnate, and she likes the cold; and so she could like trafalgar, she thinks, even if he is a stranger and a warlord, an enemy in full.

*

trafalgar spends his time in the laboratories and the libraries, inspecting every piece of equipment with care, going through file cabinets that haven't been touched in years. many of the ones he pulls open belch clouds of dust, and monet wonders what he could possibly be searching for that is so old as to predate caesar.

in the laboratories, too, he doesn't have the look of an amateur. when monet explains the purpose of a particular apparatus he nods, and he turns on the rest with expert precision. eventually she gets him to divulge, "i'm a doctor," beyond his title _surgeon of death_ , a real doctor, one who knows how to mend as well as dismember.

she remembers reading the reports that he'd healed strawhat luffy, after the summit war. she'd found it hard to picture, with his reputation, but meeting him in person—all alone, without his crew, without even caesar standing by because caesar is always too busy elsewhere—it seems less impossible than it had. 

still: he's a murderer, one who tore out the hearts of a hundred men in a gruesome gift to the scum of the earth masquerading as the protectors of the seas. she wills herself not to forget it; while her own heart is in his possession, most of all.

*

she reports on trafalgar to joker, and joker laughs and says _watch him_ , and _he's a traitor_ , and _he deserves to die._

she thinks joker believes everyone deserves to die, if only so that he may be amused. it makes her sad to think that trafalgar's head—and hers, someday, this she knows, if she doesn't die in joker's service she will die because he has decreed it—will adorn the pikes of the castle at dressrosa. 

trafalgar continues at his research, digging tirelessly through file cabinets and revisiting laboratories he's already seen. he sleeps only very rarely, and save for over the surveillance cameras that line every passageway and room in the facility she sees him only in the mess hall, where caesar and his many half-beast underlings (herself now included, she supposes) laugh together over their meals.

she thinks trafalgar only sits next to her because she's the quietest; more often than not she reads the morning paper with her glasses low on her nose over breakfast, being well-informed ever a crucial part of playing spy. he himself eats efficiently and entirely without manners, deep in thought and his face hardly visible under the brim of his hat.

"our resident warlord," caesar laughs once, and she thinks that trafalgar is certainly the image of one, tall and menacing and armed. but the image clashes with how she's seen him look slumped forward on his elbows as he reads through paper after paper in the archives, exhausted and silent; and she wants more than anything to know how it is that he has sinned in the eyes of god and joker.

*

he finds a room of the archives that monet had given up for lost, and she helps him clear the way and open the doors, so that the file cabinets inside can be extracted. he doesn't thank her—she thinks pirate captains rarely give thanks, for being a pirate is all taking and never asking.

she looks on by camera and in person as he works throughout the day, finds herself spending more time studying his expression and the furrow in his brow than taking care of her own duties.

caesar doesn't notice or care, and if his underlings take note they say nothing. she's above them in caesar's command structure, after all, overseer and their master's own right hand.

the right hand whose heart now lies in trafalgar's possession instead of caesar's own, because of course she's _treasured_. it tastes bitter, being so expendable.

she does not trust caesar with her life, and she still does not trust trafalgar, when joker wants his death so much; but she trusts trafalgar more than she expected, all the same, and still far more than joker.

*

they work side-by-side when trafalgar demands that a set of records be returned to chronological order.

it takes hours, sifting through piles and laying every item out on the floor to cross-reference the dates. by the time caesar calls for dinner they're only half-finished; after, they keep going for long enough that she loses track of the time, too immersed in the work and the sound of a blizzard raging on outside.

when at last they finish trafalgar sits back with her to observe their efforts, shoulders nearly brushing, and he picks up the earliest to flip through the pages, frowning. suddenly irked, she says, "don't you ever smile, look how much we've finished."

he glances towards her in surprise. they've hardly spoken a word to each other throughout the day despite their proximity. he says, "and look how much still remains. not something to make light of."

"i'm not," monet assures him, "i'm not." and she thinks, _hunted by joker, of course he looks grave._ every servitor of the young master has a noose around their neck from the moment they bow, and trafalgar must be all too aware that his years of running have only tightened the rope.

*

it's funny, in retrospect: as a human she was always the short one, looking up as her partner would lean down to kiss her. trafalgar is tall and long and ought to tower over everyone, but these days she's the one that towers over him, vaulted by her harpy legs.

so when the moment strikes (attempt made, dice rolled) he's the one with his shoulders to the wall, her leaning down to kiss him. she's surprised when he doesn't push her off despite being startled, only tilts his head back to accept the motion, easy.

standing in the hallway between their quarters, she is aware that what she's doing is very, very stupid. bound to end with trafalgar's death, certainly, risky for her, definitely; borderline suicidal, if they're seen and she doesn't lie well enough. she finds it difficult to care.

"is this okay," she asks, swallowing all the real reasons she wants to find out whether there's any warmth in him—because so much about them is alike, because though she wouldn't wish her own fate on any other she thanks god for finding someone like herself, because the loneliness of the years since dressrosa's overthrow has been overwhelming—says, "you're attractive. if you like—"

"yes," trafalgar says, and takes a step to the side towards the door of his room. his expression is unreadable, just then, as lost behind dark eyes as it's ever been; but he opens the door and he lets her through, and monet wonders at the ease of it, getting him to do this despite all his caution. she's sure he must have considered that it might be only a tactic, spy trade extraction. 

it's a fumble in the dark to the bed, neither of them touching the lights, and she pulls off his hat (his hair is long and coarse underneath, to her delight) and has her feathered hands at the zipper of his coat when he says, "i may not be everything you expect," shakily breathless, the first time that she can remember his being anything but fiercely self-assured, "i'm not—it's not."

"it doesn't matter," she says, "i promise," and she wonders if he sees the lie, claiming to want him for the superficial when in truth that matters least of all. 

he's not what she expected.

what he is is just as good, and she brushes her feathers over the two horizontal scars adorning his chest under the black ink of his tattoo with a faint sense of reverence; she's never been discerning about the type of body her partners have, and so the rest of him, too, she accepts with a glance, melds against him.

the wind howling outside is the only sound besides their movement, in the end; and it's only trafalgar's gasp that breaks the silence, breathed hot against her neck, something warm about the cold-hearted surgeon after all.

she goes to her own quarters after, acutely aware of his lack of a heartbeat and the presence of her own somewhere in the room, outside herself.

*

chaos comes to punk hazard.

it arrives with a suitable bang, wrapped in a pirate crew under a flag with a straw hat and added to by the G-5 marines. hidden in the snow, monet watches as trafalgar walks out to meet strawhat luffy and comes back a traitor; tells everything to caesar, duty-bound, and watches his mouth twist into a grisly caricature of a smile.

vergo arrives shortly after. monet thinks only of funeral bells, accompanying the executioner's coming.

"has he grown complacent in his time here?" vergo wants to know, and monet doesn't know how to answer that but she says _no_ , all the same; for all that she's shared law's bed she's never once felt that he's dropped his guard. a fuck, nothing more, for both of them, a rebuttal to fatigue and fear.

"he's a still a child and as foolish as one," vergo says, and, "i'll have him at joker's feet and out of your hair by tomorrow."

monet nods, and thinks _an end to all good things_ , and goes to seek him out.

*

when they find him, she watches vergo club trafalgar over the head so viciously that she fears vergo's cracked his skull.

obscenely, as vergo hauls trafalgar's unconscious body up off the floor all she can think of is how she ran her hands through his hair, now matted with blood; how hair is the last thing to go on a head jammed on a pike, a dark mass framing the dead's eternal smile. 

she helps vergo put him in chains and throw him in caesar's display cage, taking care to soak up the blood in trafalgar's mouth as she does. joker's highest-ranked hunter, she suspects, thinks only in terms of violence, uncaring if his prey dies before delivery from choking on his own blood.

caesar brings in the others he's captured—the white hunter and his second-in-command, strawhat luffy and his underlings; a black-eyed woman and a man like a pacifista—before trafalgar finally wakes, gaze bleary and unfocused, silent. she notices only because she's the one seated facing the cage, watching them while vergo treats himself to tea and caesar paces in front of a screen, gesturing wildly and laughing at his own words. 

the most curious thing she sees as they wait is strawhat luffy (waking before all the rest, not a surprise, every file she's read lists him first and foremost as resilient) looking wide-eyed at trafalgar before scooting closer. as monet watches strawhat presses his shoulder against trafalgar's own, and she can't think of any reason for him to do so save reassurance: more kindness than monet would expect between newfound allies, nearly strangers save for the summit war. 

more kindness than she's shown trafalgar, now. 

the cage isn't silent much longer, because the moment the others start to wake strawhat starts talking, chattering unstoppably at the white hunter, and once all of them have their eyes open caesar and vergo turn on them, too. she can only look away when vergo crushes trafalgar's heart in his fist to make a point, tearing a cry out of his lungs that rings against the walls.

it would be better if trafalgar didn't talk back, she knows, just as she knows that trafalgar can't stop: at the end, when the hounds have you by the throat, when you're pinned to the wall and the noose is growing tighter, words are all you have. 

caesar says, "you're going to be my example to the world," and vergo nods agreement. change of plan, end of the line.

she looks away as caesar sends the cage towing away to the outside of the facility, terrified of meeting trafalgar's gaze.

*

the next time she sees trafalgar both of them ought to be dead.

two hours later and so many things different, she lies collapsed in the control-room of the facility's reactor, vision blurring from the wounds dealt her by the swordsman and swordswoman. her breath is loud in her ears, and the knowledge of what joker will want is already certain; the transponder snail sitting beside her is only there for the sake of confirmation.

trafalgar kicking open the door is the second to last thing she ever expects, and she ought to know by now with him that whatever comes to mind first must always be wrong: because the last thing she expects, the very last thing, is his dropping to his knees beside her and growling, "get _up_ , right now, there isn't any time."

she can hardly think through the effort it takes to keep herself whole against the swordsman's haki, but she manages to say, "what are you," and, "why are you here, why don't you kill me, you know i serve _him_."

struck, too late, his hand on her shoulder, she wonders if trafalgar loves her: if she's miscalculated so much.

he must reach the same conclusion as she does, just then, because he heads her off before she can ask. "i'm not in love with you," he says, and, "get up," and, "i'm here because you don't deserve to die for him, damn him."

"it's the only option," she says, and remains on the floor despite his vise-like grip: the metal there cool against her forehead, the blizzard here to keep her safe just long enough to carry out her duty. "i die for him or he kills me, and at least here it's how i choose, by my own hand, my own free will."

"there's nothing free about it," hisses trafalgar, "if you're so eager to die at someone's hand that isn't his, i can kill us both." that, she believes. "get up, come with me."

she doesn't budge. "what makes you so different," she says. she knows what's different but it comes out of her mouth all the same, she's hardly stupid but she can't trust him, not just for being so like her, not just for coming back. "what makes you any less a puppeteer. i'd rather die now than be a marionette a second time." 

a beat, two, and trafalgar says, "a trade," his voice determined, not angry but something like it. "one more time, my life for yours, your heart for mine. i've yours already."

when she looks up at him his eyes are very large and very dark, and there's blood oozing down the side of his face from a quickly-bruising gash. _vergo_ , she thinks, and thinks of pikes, of her own head beside trafalgar's if she leaves this room alive. 

thinks of how giving his heart away nearly ended trafalgar already, says: "you must be joking."

there's a sound like the rush of air, and between one moment and the next he's got his heart in his palm, held out towards her like she couldn't kill him in an instant with it, drive an icy spike through it before he could ever reach her own. 

"not joking," he breathes.

she thinks, _are you so lonely_ , and then _am i_ , thinks of what it is she fears so much. being on the run alone, no one to watch her back, no one to end her before joker can do the same and worse. 

"the weak don't get to choose how they die," says trafalgar, "and you aren't weak." she hears the echo of joker's voice in that, and it makes her blood run cold, only: she believes it, knows it to be true.

between trafalgar and joker, that's a choice: between dying for joker or because of him, she is no longer sure. 

" _choose_ ," says trafalgar, and he's still kneeling beside her with his heart in his hand, _fool_.

she thinks of pikes, side-by-side. put enough of them together and they look like a fence; add more and they make a barrier. before they jammed heads on pikes they put them on ramparts for defenses, and at dressrosa she saw how well they worked.

she looks at trafalgar's heart, freely given, and thinks _i'm not in love with you, either._

reaches out, and chooses.


End file.
